<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"\n\nclint eastwood, pure and simple? Here it is: He gives a guy hope.\n\n For all of us who have wondered if we&amp;#39;d ever achieve our dreams\u2014when in our head all we can hear is the tick, tick, tick of the clock and that goddamned voice saying, &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s too late. You&amp;#39;re too old to go for it. You&amp;#39;ll never achieve it&amp;quot;\u2014there&amp;#39;s Clint. In this youth-obsessed world, the guy is the patron saint of late bloomers.\n\nThink about it: His breakthrough role\u2014playing the Man with No Name in those spaghetti Westerns? He&amp;#39;s in his midthirties when he does those. He doesn&amp;#39;t direct his first movie, the still riveting Play Misty for Me, until he&amp;#39;s 40. And Dirty Harry? He&amp;#39;s 41 when he makes that (and even then, he gets the role only after Sinatra pulls out).\n\n But here&amp;#39;s where things get really crazy. In 1993 he shows up at the Academy Awards with Unforgiven. He is 62 and has never won an Oscar. The film wins four, including Best Picture and Best Director.\n\nAnd then this happens: The guy doesn&amp;#39;t hang it up\u2014he only starts getting stronger. He goes on a stunning run of creativity that a man half his age would kill for. Eastwood is now 79, and in the seventeen years since Unforgiven he has made fifteen movies. Three of those have been nominated for Best Picture, and he has been nominated for Best Director or Best Actor an additional four times. All told, he now has four Oscars, and his films have won another seven.\n\nHe has made sixty-six movies. He&amp;#39;s acted in fifty-seven and directed twenty-nine. Now he&amp;#39;s about to release his sixty-seventh: Invictus. He directed and produced it, and it&amp;#39;s the true story of how Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) and the captain of the overwhelmingly white South African rugby team (Matt Damon) used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to bring the country together.\n\n\n\nhis hands are soft. And he might be the only guy alive who makes you envy crow&amp;#39;s-feet. His eyes are a beautiful light blue.\n\nI meet him outside a soundstage at Warner Bros., and he suggests we walk to his office, a little Mission-style bungalow in a shady corner of the lot. He walks with a steady, smooth gait\u2014he&amp;#39;s six feet three\u2014and when he talks it&amp;#39;s in a quiet, soothing voice. Not that crusty Dirty Harry thing.\n\n Outside one soundstage, a taping of Ellen has just ended, and a gaggle of women spills out. As we approach, one or two of them realize, &amp;quot;Hey, isn&amp;#39;t that\u2014? It is!&amp;quot; But no words come from their agape mouths. Clint smiles and nods at them, tugs at the brim of a hat that doesn&amp;#39;t exist, and says, &amp;quot;Ladies....&amp;quot; Then he keeps walking.\n\nWhen we get to his bungalow, he&amp;#39;s hungry. He asks if I want a sandwich, and I say yes. He shows me into what I guess you&amp;#39;d call the living room. There&amp;#39;s a leather couch and a coffee table. Beside the couch there&amp;#39;s a chair. Clint looks at the chair for a minute and then says, &amp;quot;Well, I guess you could sit down.&amp;quot; I sit. Then he says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ll go make us some lunch.&amp;quot;\n\nThe room is dark, and the only light is what&amp;#39;s left of the hard, white afternoon sun that bounces in through the windows. It&amp;#39;s a plain room. Aside from the furniture, the only things in it are an old upright piano and, on the wall above the couch, an Italian poster of Clint for Per un Pugno di Dollari.\n\nA few minutes later, Clint comes back.\n\n&amp;quot;Here&amp;#39;s a sandwich,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Hope you like it.&amp;quot; He puts a plate in front of me: lunchmeat turkey, lettuce, tomato, and mustard on whole wheat.\n\nClint moves toward the sofa. When he sits, it&amp;#39;s like one of those big Giacometti Walking Man sculptures trying to sit. He&amp;#39;s all legs. It takes a minute, but finally he gets comfortable, extending his legs onto the coffee table, his sandwich in his lap.\n\nWhy Invictus? Why now?\n\n I&amp;#39;m not an objective party. But the world needs this kind of story nowadays. It&amp;#39;s just&amp;amp;everybody&amp;#39;s so screwed up. Nobody knows where they&amp;#39;re heading. It seems like our country&amp;#39;s in kind of a morbid mood, because of the recession or whatever. I think our politicians could learn a lot from Mandela.\n\nWhat do you think they could learn?\n\n About racial relationships and such. It just seems like we&amp;#39;re making a lot of mistakes on this whole calling everybody racist. Everybody&amp;#39;s calling everybody morons and nuts. We&amp;#39;re becoming more juvenile as a nation. The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits. People 50 years old acting like that. In Gran Torino, I play a guy who&amp;#39;s racially offensive. But he learned. It shows that you&amp;#39;re never too old to learn and embrace people that you don&amp;#39;t understand to begin with. It seems like nobody else got that message, I guess.\n\nInvictus is set in South Africa in 1995, but I think it&amp;#39;s impossible not to see it as a metaphor for America in 2009. For instance, there&amp;#39;s a scene where some white guys are protesting against Mandela at a rugby game. They may as well be yelling, &amp;quot;We want our country back!&amp;quot;\n\n Mandela was so different from where we are. I mean, Mandela invites his jailer to his inauguration. But Mandela, he&amp;#39;s in prison twenty-seven years, he had a lot of time to think. He philosophized. He came out almost as this perception, or taught perception, of what Christ would be like if he existed: a guy who would forgive.\n\nSeventeen years ago, you made Unforgiven. I feel like the title of this movie could be Forgiven\u2014it&amp;#39;s a movie that&amp;#39;s all about forgiveness and redeeming yourself.\n\n Yeah, and it&amp;#39;s Mandela&amp;#39;s unconquerable soul. You should never give up your inner self.\n\n In Invictus, that poem that Mandela quotes, the poem that gave him strength in prison and is the title of the movie\u2014\n\n By William Ernest Henley, yeah.\n\nDid you know those were Timothy McVeigh&amp;#39;s last words? He quoted that last couplet\u2014\n\n &amp;quot;Master of my fate...&amp;quot;\n\n&amp;quot;I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul.&amp;quot;\n\n Well, if you&amp;#39;re gonna go out, you might as well have a nice quote. [laughs] That seemed to be Mandela&amp;#39;s favorite poem. I think we use it effectively in there.\n\nIs there anything you&amp;#39;d sacrifice yourself for?\n\n [long pause] I&amp;#39;m sure there is. But mine&amp;#39;s more basic. It would be family. It comes down to the basic reason for the male being here, other than propagating, which is to defend and protect the family. [pause] But it would probably stay at that level. How far out the friendship chain it would go, I don&amp;#39;t know. [laughs]\n\nWhen you met Mandela, did you learn anything from him on how to be, how to live?\n\n Eh, no, because he was a guy who had a lot of faults. He was not very attentive to his children. And he had problems with women. I guess he liked... Ah, I mean, there&amp;#39;s nothing wrong with that.\n\nHe said with a grin.\n\n His private life was probably not as great as his public life. He&amp;#39;s a man underneath it all.\n\nDo you hope that people will look at this movie and learn anything?\n\n Well, they&amp;#39;ll take it on a lot of levels. It seems like we&amp;#39;re stepping on our dicks all the time. Jimmy Carter accusing people who disagree with the president of being racist. The president sides with the black professor rather than the policeman. Everybody just ready to jump down everybody else&amp;#39;s throat. You know, sure, that was a mistake, because [Obama] started out perfectly: &amp;quot;I don&amp;#39;t have the facts.&amp;quot; That was time to stop. Carter is just kind of a senile old guy, I guess, and it&amp;#39;s something about being an old guilty southerner that makes you want to be perceived as doing penance for all the years you probably cast a lot of aspersions on black people when you were younger, or something like that. I don&amp;#39;t know. Maybe that&amp;#39;s not a fair judgment, but it just seems like what we&amp;#39;re doing. Those are just two examples.\n\n What we&amp;#39;re doing on both sides of the political spectrum, right and left, is just yelling at each other. I look at the TV, and if you disagree with somebody, they are a fucking fruitcake, moron, screwball, stuff like that. We can be much more tolerant of people if we want to, but the extremists on both sides are the ones who ruin it for the rest of us.... There&amp;#39;s so much transmission and very little reception. You watch MSNBC or Fox. They&amp;#39;re not listening. They&amp;#39;re just all talking over. Very few people, when you watch, really let a person finish their thought. They just want to stomp them down right away. Like a bug. Step on it before it bites you. I won&amp;#39;t go on those shows for that one reason.\n\nI&amp;#39;ve always considered myself a social libertarian: Leave everybody alone. Quit trying to force everything down everybody&amp;#39;s throat. But maybe that&amp;#39;s just dreaming in this world today.\n\nDo you have a code you live by?\n\n Be honest with yourself. Honest with what you know and what you don&amp;#39;t know. I just believe in being straight-ahead with people.\n\nYour persona is all about physical toughness. But I think in your life and work what you value above all is mental toughness. It seems to me what you really abhor in people and society is mental weakness.\n\n I think so. I mean, God gave you a brain. Do the best you can with it. And you don&amp;#39;t have to be Einstein, but Einstein was mentally tough. He believed what he believed. And he worked out things. And he argued with people who disagreed with him. But I&amp;#39;m sure he didn&amp;#39;t call everybody jerks.\n\nWhat drives you?\n\n As I get older, I tend to put more into family than I used to. Because when I was younger, I was looking to get the brass ring, and like every actor, you think every job&amp;#39;s your last job. So when you get the brass ring, you play the hand for as long as you can. And then one day you wake up and realize, &amp;quot;Jesus, I&amp;#39;ve been doing this a long time, and I&amp;#39;m still playing the hand. Why not just keep rolling? There&amp;#39;s no reason to have anxieties.&amp;quot; So what drives me? I like working. That&amp;#39;s when I&amp;#39;m feeling my best. And the people around me know that. My wife knows that. But she knows I&amp;#39;m a loyal citizen to the family. And that wasn&amp;#39;t necessarily a given thing. That was acquired.\n\nDo you still meditate?  \n\n Twice a day.\n\nHow does that work for you?  \n\n It works great. Because it just gives you a chance to gather your thoughts. I&amp;#39;m religious about it when I&amp;#39;m working.\n\nSo how...  \n\n I visualize whole sequences in the morning, before I go. I believe in whatever self-help you can give yourself, whether you believe in Buddha or whatever. I used to be much more of an agnostic. I&amp;#39;m not really a person of an organized religion. But I&amp;#39;m now much more tolerant of people who are religious, because I can see why they got there. I can sympathize.\n\nSo meditation with me was just a self-reliant thing. I&amp;#39;ve been doing it almost forty years. But I don&amp;#39;t go out and sell it. A lot of other people find meaning some other way, screaming in the street or whatever it is that gets it for you. Or checking out the girls. [laughs] No, I&amp;#39;m past that. I&amp;#39;m living in my state of monogamy quite happily. I never thought I&amp;#39;d get there, but I did. It feels good. I like myself better than I did.\n\nBetter than when you were not monogamous?  \n\n Yes.\n\nWhy?\n\n Because I have more respect. Because I found the woman I really was always looking for. And I&amp;#39;m giving her the respect that I should give her. So I like myself better for doing that.\n\nBefore you met your wife, do you think you didn&amp;#39;t fully respect women?\n\n No, I think I respected women. [smiles] I think when you&amp;#39;re younger, you&amp;#39;re driven by a lot of hormonal effects. I just\u2014it&amp;#39;s like Everest: &amp;quot;Because it&amp;#39;s there.&amp;quot; [laughs]\n\nAnd there&amp;#39;s certainly a lot of &amp;quot;there&amp;quot; in Hollywood.\n\n There&amp;#39;s a lot of &amp;quot;there.&amp;quot; [laughs] So you kind of go, Okay.... And you&amp;#39;re young, and you&amp;#39;re kind of stupid. But I certainly don&amp;#39;t feel that way now. Though certainly the leopard spots don&amp;#39;t go completely away.\n\nWhen you find real love, it fills a hole in you. What was the hole in you? \n\n Well, it was the whole me. But it took me until I was 65 to get there. There&amp;#39;s a lot of people who learn a lot faster than me, that&amp;#39;s for sure.\n\nYou said once you regret that you never had the chance to work with the John Fords, Howard Hawkses, and William Wellmans\u2014that generation of directors. In thirty years, are people going to say, &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#39;t get a chance to work with Mr. Eastwood&amp;quot;?\n\n Yeah, maybe.\n\nWhat will we lose with your passing?\n\n I don&amp;#39;t know. Just that everybody, at that time... I had been a kid growing up in the &amp;#39;40s watching pictures by Ford and Raoul Walsh. Hitchcock and Huston. And they were very influential on me. They all just told stories. They didn&amp;#39;t necessarily follow one genre\u2014whatever they felt like doing. But I do believe I came along at the right period for me. Because when I started directing, not many actors were doing it. There had been precedent before that, dating back to Stan Laurel. But I was just determined. I said, &amp;quot;Someday I&amp;#39;m gonna look out there and I&amp;#39;m not gonna like what I see. And I don&amp;#39;t necessarily want to be out of the business. I like doing this.&amp;quot; So I took it on. I never did get to that day where I said I&amp;#39;d quit. I&amp;#39;ve flirted with the idea a lot lately, but every once in a while a script comes along and I think, That&amp;#39;s a challenge that I haven&amp;#39;t been able to do before.\n\nYou talk about &amp;quot;story.&amp;quot; When you were a  kid, did you have a favorite story that  your mother read you? What&amp;#39;s the first story you remember loving?\n\n I used to love those Freddy the Pig stories. There was a series of books, one was called The Ignoramus, or something like that. They were about barnyard animals that talked. The head of it was Freddy the Pig. And I remember those were fun to read. Those were my earliest books. And then I loved Treasure Island and all that stuff\u2014adventure stories. Life was pretty simple then. Because you didn&amp;#39;t sit and watch television all the time. There was the radio. Everything was listening, so you imagined everything.\n\nThere&amp;#39;s a nice little moment in Changeling when the boy sits up in front of the radio and we watch him listening.  \n\n We used to do that, visualize it all. So you&amp;#39;re not seeing somebody else&amp;#39;s interpretation of it visually; you&amp;#39;re seeing it with your interpretation. So probably from a directing standpoint, it&amp;#39;s better, because you&amp;#39;re seeing it the way you would do it. There&amp;#39;s an art to listening. There&amp;#39;s not much of it going on in the world. But it&amp;#39;s... As an actor, it&amp;#39;s the most important single function.\n\nWell, that would be reacting.  \n\n Exactly. You&amp;#39;ve got to digest what somebody&amp;#39;s saying and then react to it, come back accordingly. But if you don&amp;#39;t have that ability to listen, then you&amp;#39;re never going to be able to act.\n\nDo you believe in reincarnation?  \n\n [laughs] No.\n\nSo what happens to Clint Eastwood when Clint Eastwood&amp;#39;s no longer here?  \n\n That&amp;#39;s the end.\n\nNo heaven, no hell? Just end of story?\n\n You know, I&amp;#39;m a show-me kind of guy. [laughs] I would love to... I&amp;#39;m thinking that&amp;#39;s another dream. Mankind has a lot of dreams, and one is immortality. Some religions advocate that if you believe, you&amp;#39;ll live forever. That&amp;#39;s fine. That&amp;#39;d be cool. But I don&amp;#39;t know anyone that&amp;#39;s ever happened to. [laughs] But if you believe in reincarnation, you&amp;#39;re putting too much on the other side. If you do believe in God, or you believe in some sort of creation, or you believe in evolution, you&amp;#39;re given one shot at it. And you should do the best you can with that shot. And you should respect that. And I suppose you should be thankful that you&amp;#39;ve been given the ability to do certain things in life, and be appreciative, and move on. And not be greedy enough to want to stay around forever.\n\nYou&amp;#39;ve been around for a long time.\n\n Yeah. I&amp;#39;m not one of these guys who want to check out early. But when you check out, it&amp;#39;s when you&amp;#39;re supposed to check out. You know, I take care of myself.\n\nIs there a special diet you&amp;#39;re on?  \n\n The only thing special about it is I just try to watch the intake of saturated fats. I was blessed with a reasonable system that just never put on a lot of weight, so I always took advantage of that. I remember I had a friend who had been in the war in Korea and had been shot up a lot. He came back and he became very religious, and he&amp;#39;d always preach, &amp;quot;God gives you one body; you should take care of it. God gives you one mind; you should take care of it.&amp;quot; And I&amp;#39;ve never philosophized or expounded on philosophies that I&amp;#39;ve had, but I basically feel that way. I believe that you&amp;#39;ve got one brain, and so why would you become a junkie and wreck it?\n\nYou&amp;#39;ve never done drugs?  \n\n No. I got all the way through the &amp;#39;60s and the &amp;#39;70s on beer. I just never got into drugs. I always thought beer and a couple other things were about as good as I wanted to know about.... [laughs]\n\nWhat&amp;#39;s the &amp;quot;couple other things&amp;quot;? \n\n Well, you know, just general sort of life experiences, that&amp;#39;s about it. [grins] I just... If it got any better than that, I wouldn&amp;#39;t want to know about it.\n\nWere you close to your mother?\n\n I was. She died a few years back. She was 97.\n\nWhat did you learn from her?  \n\n I watched how she changed philosophically. Over the years, she always loved to read. I guess she was a late bloomer, too. I don&amp;#39;t know if she read that much when we were growing up, &amp;#39;cause both my parents worked most of the time, to make ends meet.\n\nAre there qualities of her that you have?  \n\n I never analyze myself too much. I don&amp;#39;t know if it&amp;#39;s afraid of what you&amp;#39;ll see, or afraid it&amp;#39;ll go away, or whatever. None of the above. It&amp;#39;s, um\u2014I don&amp;#39;t think inwardly very much.\n\n But you&amp;#39;re meditating twice a day. You&amp;#39;re not thinking about yourself?  \n\n No. You&amp;#39;re thinking about sort of putting yourself in the state of ultimate relaxation. Yeah, you just let it happen. Whatever happens. But, um, I don&amp;#39;t know. Shit. [laughs]\n\nOne of your sons is in this new movie. How do you counsel your sons about manhood, being a man?  \n\n It&amp;#39;s really difficult. You just try to give them local morals. You know, you let the woman go through the door first. Why? Because you&amp;#39;re stronger, you&amp;#39;re younger. It&amp;#39;s your duty as a man. That&amp;#39;s what you&amp;#39;re here for, to take care of things. And nowadays I don&amp;#39;t think men are taught that. It wasn&amp;#39;t a macho thing; nobody felt they had to kick over the table and act tough to prove they were men. I&amp;#39;m fond of telling this story\u2014I remember meeting Rocky Marciano. We shook hands. It was a real light handshake, like he was a concert pianist. I walked away and thought, Yeah, Rocky Marciano doesn&amp;#39;t have to grab you. He knows he could kill you. He&amp;#39;s a real guy.\n\n So be strong and protect yourself, emotionally and physically. But don&amp;#39;t\u2014you don&amp;#39;t have to take any crap from the world, but at the same time, you don&amp;#39;t have to go looking for crap, either. Don&amp;#39;t let the feminist revolution turn you into an anti. Women really do want your help, and that&amp;#39;s why we&amp;#39;re on the same planet, the same level.\n\nDo you have a Rosebud, like in Citizen Kane? \n\n I have a little bear that has a suit and a hat, sort of a brown fedora. It belonged to my grandfather and then to my dad&amp;#39;s brother and then my dad. So I&amp;#39;m figuring this little guy is probably a hundred and a half.\n\nTell me about your father&amp;#39;s death, in 1970.\n\n It really affected me. And I&amp;#39;m gonna tell you why, because he&amp;amp;just dropped dead.\n\nAnd he was 63.  You were almost 63 when you won your first Academy Award.  \n\n Yeah. [pauses] Well, I was up at Lake Tahoe with my wife and my son Kyle, who was 2 years old. And I got the phone call that my dad had just died. And it really got to me because of the usual guilt that people have, and you wish, &amp;quot;Why didn&amp;#39;t I spend more time with him? Ask him to play golf more often or something? And hang out. And just say, &amp;#39;Dad, let&amp;#39;s go have a beer or something.&amp;#39; &amp;quot; But you sort of take for granted your parents are there; you think they&amp;#39;re gonna be there forever, especially at that age. I guess a lot of people go through that. While I didn&amp;#39;t feel I was singled out for anything, I felt it&amp;#39;s probably the natural way to feel.\n\nWith my mother, it was different. I knew that she was into her nineties, and I knew that the time was gonna come fairly soon. And at 97, you&amp;#39;re figuring, Is she gonna make it? My last words to her were, &amp;quot;Come on. Three more years and you make the big century!&amp;quot; And she said, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#39;t want to do it.&amp;quot; So I asked the cardiologist, &amp;quot;Do we put her on IV and get her going?&amp;quot; But he says, &amp;quot;You&amp;#39;re gonna have somebody who is really pissed.&amp;quot; And I said, &amp;quot;Yeah, I can&amp;#39;t defy her wishes.&amp;quot; So I let her go.\n\n You have young children. Do you ever worry that at your age you will not live to see them grow old and be there for them?  \n\n Nah. Probably just as well. [laughs] It may be better off for them. Everybody is going to go through certain variations of the thing, and that&amp;#39;s the way it&amp;#39;s gonna be.\n\n Did your father&amp;#39;s death change how you lived?  \n\n He believed in hard work. Everything that built this country. &amp;quot;Nothing comes for nothing,&amp;quot; he&amp;#39;d say. &amp;quot;You have to work for whatever you get.&amp;quot; When I told him I wanted to go and be an actor and I was gonna drop out of school because seventy-five bucks a week sounded like a lot to me, he says, &amp;quot;God, don&amp;#39;t do that. Continue your education.&amp;quot; He says, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#39;t get in this dreamworld shit.&amp;quot; That was his deal. Yet he would have loved to have been an actor. He was a much more outgoing person than I am. He was the kind of guy everybody liked.\n\nBut once you succeeded as an actor, did he support you?\n\n God, yeah. In fact he joked about all of that\u2014&amp;quot;I told him not to do it!&amp;quot; He laughed at himself about it. I always wish he could have gone longer, to see Unforgiven. Which my mother did. She got to enjoy all that.\n\n Is there a person from history you most admire?  \n\n Churchill, I guess, because he always had these profound statements and he was such a character. He was a little round guy. He was sort of like Alfred Hitchcock. I remember I went into Hitchcock&amp;#39;s office one time. This was toward the end. And he had an office at Universal which he went to every day. He asked me to meet with him about a part. And this ecutive over there, he called me and said, &amp;quot;The picture&amp;#39;s not gonna get made, anyway.&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;Why?&amp;quot; and he said, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#39;t think he&amp;#39;s got the strength to do it.&amp;quot; And I said, &amp;quot;Well, I&amp;#39;d love to meet him.&amp;quot; So I went into his office, and he was sitting in there. And he never moved. His eyes just picked me up coming in the door, and he just followed me across the room. Like the cat and the canary or something. But it was amazing. We got along famously. We talked about his movies, and I told him how, in Play Misty, I was thinking in terms of some of his ideas.\n\nWhich ones?  \n\n Just general suspense. But we got to intellectualizing our movies, and he said, &amp;quot;You must remember one thing\u2014it&amp;#39;s only a movie.&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;Yeah, you&amp;#39;re right. It won&amp;#39;t cure cancer or any other disease in the world, but it might make somebody happy somewhere.&amp;quot; He said, &amp;quot;Yeah, that&amp;#39;s about it.&amp;quot;\n\nI just watched Misty the other night.  \n\n Had a lot of fun making it. First film. Everybody remembers their first film. Everybody remembers their first a lot of things. [long pause]\n\nYou look like you just went somewhere in your head. What are you thinking?  \n\n Ah, you just go back. It&amp;#39;s hard to believe that was 1970. Long time ago. Lot of films under the bridge since then.\n\nAt this point, there&amp;#39;s a knock at the door and a young woman comes in\u2014one of his assistants.\n\n &amp;quot;Sorry to interrupt, Clint, but your four thirty is here.&amp;quot;\n\n&amp;quot;My four thirty?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;The doctor,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Remember?&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Oh, right,&amp;quot; Clint says. &amp;quot;Tell him I&amp;#39;ll be a few more minutes.&amp;quot;\n\nWhat do you have to see a doctor for? I ask.\n\n &amp;quot;Eh, I gotta do an insurance physical before I start my next movie. They wanna see if I&amp;#39;m living.&amp;quot;\n\n He laughs.\n\nSo you still work out every day?  \n\n In the morning, I usually get up and do the elliptical. I try to do thirty minutes on that. And then, in the evening, I&amp;#39;ll pump some iron. And I stretch. Sometimes my wife and I go on vacation, and she&amp;#39;ll wanna do a yoga class, and I&amp;#39;ll say, &amp;quot;Yeah, I&amp;#39;ll take it with you.&amp;quot;\n\n What was your first date with her like?  \n\n My wife and I had our first legitimate date at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur. I remember we were having dinner, looking out at the ocean, and she says, &amp;quot;Why don&amp;#39;t we go down to Esalen?&amp;quot; For locals, they&amp;#39;ll let you in after one [a.m.] for five bucks or some ridiculously low price, and you can go sit in the hot tubs. I said, &amp;quot;Yeah, that&amp;#39;s cool.&amp;quot;\n\nThat&amp;#39;s clothing-optional down there....\n\n Yeah. So there was a couple sitting in one of these big tubs at one end of the room, and we went down to the other end where there was nobody. So I took off my clothes and jumped into the tub. And she was all embarrassed. She said, &amp;quot;You&amp;#39;re not putting on a bathing suit or anything?&amp;quot; And I said, &amp;quot;Hey, when in Rome...&amp;quot; That was the beginning. Now we have an almost 13-year-old.\n\nAre you a spiritual man?  \n\n I&amp;#39;m spiritual in the way that I\u2014things move me. If I look in the Grand Canyon, I&amp;#39;m moved.\n\nDo you believe in the idea of a soul?  \n\n Yeah, I do. I believe you have a conscience and you have a soul. I don&amp;#39;t know if it&amp;#39;s injected into you; I think it&amp;#39;s probably something inherited. Maybe it comes from your upbringing, or maybe it comes from experiences in life, successes or disappointments or a combination of all of the above. But I do believe in a soul. Soulful things, soulful music. Sometimes I think what it must have been like to be the first guy to circle around the moon and then come out from behind it and see the earth down there. Must have been some kind of moment.\n\nDo you remember the last time you cried?  \n\n [long silence] Yeah, I don&amp;#39;t think too much about it. I mean... Well, my daughter had a big white cockatoo. We get all the stuff from the ASPCA. The vet calls us and says, &amp;quot;Hey, we&amp;#39;ve got this thing here.&amp;quot; And I say, &amp;quot;We can&amp;#39;t have any more animals!&amp;quot; But my wife, Dina, is a sucker for them. She brings &amp;#39;em home. This cockatoo had kind of a tough life; it didn&amp;#39;t listen to people. The previous owners put it outside, and it got its wing torn off by a raccoon. But it was a good bird. And my 12-year-old loved it, and so did Dina. I&amp;#39;d drive all the way from Monterey to Los Angeles and I&amp;#39;d bring the bird, have him sitting on my shoulder.\n\nYou&amp;#39;re like a road pirate.  \n\n Exactly. So one day I put it on the side of a fountain [at our house]. And I went in to talk to my wife, to make sure the bird went to the vet because it needed to get its nails clipped. And when I came back out it had fallen in the fountain and drowned. And I had to go tell my daughter about it. And my poor little daughter, she was devastated. So... [pauses, his eyes well up] I love animals. This animal was a pain in the ass, but he was a character. He gave everybody a lot of laughs.\n\nPeople say that about you, too.  \n\n That&amp;#39;s true. And they&amp;#39;re right. We got all kinds of animals at home. Jesus Christ, we&amp;#39;ve got pigs, we&amp;#39;ve got chickens and birds and a rabbit. I got this crazy rabbit that just follows me around all the time like a dog. Augie&amp;#39;s his name.\n\nHe lives in the house?  \n\n Yeah. This rabbit&amp;#39;s crazy, and he just loves hanging out with me.\n\nmichael hainey is gq&amp;#39;s deputy editor."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/clint-eastwood-legend-invictus-director?currentPage=6>